Hamilton Nolan

AngryJournalist.com, an increasingly popular site that consists of nothing but rants from pissed-off reporters, is now the most accurate summation extant of journalism as an industry. "I'm angry at my coworker who thinks his awful high school basketball videos that lack basic storytelling are good enough, because they get the most 'clicks,'" says one. Don't we know THAT feeling! After the jump, videos of Nick Denton playing basketball. Wait, no. After the jump, two comments that encompass everything that is right and wrong with journalism in America today.

Angry Journalist #276:

Editors who tell you to "dumb down" the writing, not trusting the reader's intelligence. The public who doesn't give a shit about what's going on around them. AP style, nut grafs, and ledes. The lack of balls in writing style. The large MSM outlets who skew the news and make community journalists look like assholes. The lack of truth in journalism. The fact that politicians try to make themselves look good in the press, rather than give the truth, and we have to take it as is. The fact that the state I live in has one reporter opening a month, we have a popular journalism major at a state university, and dozens apply to each job that comes up. What are the rest of the kids doing? The fact that I can't pay off my debts as a community journalist, and in fact only create more. The fact that if I ever want to move up in this field I have to give out blow jobs. The fact that writing shitty stories over irregular hours makes me so numb I can't bear to sit and write fiction during my time off. The fact that I am considering a trade job to get out of this field I worked so hard to get into. The fact that I love the concept of the news, but hate the way it is done, and am disillusioned by how I am told to do it. The fact that papers look to hire journalists with online and multimedia skills, but only take paper packet applications. The fact we have to write the same amount of stories we always have AND do more multimedia on top of it. The fact that there is never enough time to really spend out in the public chatting with the people who matter most — the readers. Shall I continue?